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All Things Home
All Things Home

simple, natural fall mantel | autumn decorating

In the very early years of my blogging career, I connected with Layla of the Lettered Cottage.  I was smitten with her design aesthetic and eye for styling.  We both wrote tutorials for HGTV.com (you can find mine HERE) and wrote and contributed photography for several of the same editors and magazines.  We met at a few blog conferences over the years and even partnered on the very first Chapel Market hosted by her community in Alabama.  As another fun piece of history, one of the colors in the MMS Milk Paint line, Layla’s Mint, is named after her.  It was a color I custom-mixed for a secretary desk for her kitchen and we added it to the line soon after.  (That color is still available HERE.)  So, when Layla asked if I would like to team up to share fall decorating inspiration or a project with our readers, I

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September 26, 2024 11 Comments
Decorating

adding doors back on a hutch | dining room makeover

The dining room makeover has been at a standstill since I painted the ceiling last weekend because I have been in bed sick for several days.  I am up and about now but still moving slowly and not feeling the greatest.  It’s just normal virus stuff – congestion, sore throat, cough, and aches.  I’ve missed my daily walks and making progress on projects, but I’ve been enjoying some period dramas, interesting documentaries, reading books, and spending hours snuggling with the cats until I feel up to returning to my normal routines. Last week when I finished painting the dining room ceiling, though, I decided to make an additional small change. When we first looked at this house, I imagined the dining room as a library/dining room with built-in shelves lining most of the walls.  Once we started settling in and using the house a bit more, I wasn’t sure that

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September 16, 2024 8 Comments
1970 home renovation

painting the dining room ceiling

Well, I finally did it.  I’ve been dragging my feet for over a year, but I painted the dining room ceiling.  I have been hung up on working on this room just because I knew the ceiling had to be done first and I just really didn’t want to do it.  It wasn’t the painting I was dreading, but all of the prep work of moving things out and making sure the furniture and floors were protected.  I’m usually pretty casual when it comes to using dropcloths, but when painting a ceiling, I have to be more careful.  Saturday morning was dreary and cold, so I almost talked myself into a low-key day, but I was ready to have this job behind me.  I knew it would be a relief, so I pulled out the dropcloths, removed all of the small stuff from the room, got out the paint and

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September 9, 2024 26 Comments
Art

tonal floral still life sketch | oil painting tutorial

It’s been a little while since I’ve done a painting video tutorial, so even though this was just a sketch to get into the groove of oil painting again, I decided to set up the camera and turn it into a tutorial.  Really, it’s more of a paint-a-long than a tutorial since I wouldn’t consider myself an expert when it comes to painting flowers!  It is definitely not my sweet spot when it comes to oil painting, but they are a popular subject so I’ve decided to keep working on them despite feeling like it’s not my forté. This painting was done in about 40 minutes, so it’s what I would consider a sketch more than a finished painting.  My goal wasn’t to have something that looked refined and detailed, but instead a painting that was impressionistic, simplified, and loose.  I focused on blocking in the larger shapes and only

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September 5, 2024 9 Comments
All Things Home

a bench, a fountain, and garden lights

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Lamps Plus.  As always, all words and opinions expressed are honest and my own. Do you remember some of the lighting fixtures I’ve gotten from Lamps Plus for our house so far?  We updated the 50-year-old exterior lights with the classic Stratton Street Lights… We added a lot more light to the long, interior hall with the Possini Euro Star fixtures… …and freed up the living room side tables by adding the Mendes Antique Brass wall sconces over the sofa. As we’ve been turning some of our attention to the house’s exterior this spring and summer, I started looking at some of the items offered in the “plus” categories of Lamps Plus.  What initially led me to them was the search for a teak bench similar to the one we bought in PA and took with us to Minnesota.  I loved that bench, but

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September 3, 2024 22 Comments
All Things Home

pressing & mounting flowers | video tutorial

Last month, I shared how I was taking cuttings from my garden to preserve them in my gardening notebook.  As various other herbs and flowers have reached their peak, I have clipped them to add.  I decided I would make a quick video on pressing and mounting flowers in a notebook while I was at it.  I still have a few more to cut and press, but I have a pretty nice collection happening and I love how it makes my notebook even more personal and special. I pressed all of the herbs, a few annuals that are in pots on the patio and in the garden beds, and blooms off of flowering bushes.  I labeled each one along with the date it was planted or cut.  Admittedly, I didn’t stay consistent with the dating, but precision wasn’t the goal.  I just want to keep a general record of the

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August 28, 2024 9 Comments
All Things Home

a rug, the first dried hydrangeas, & a cloche

Do you remember the jute rug in the kitchen eating area with the scalloped edge?  I loved the detail around the border, but I have some sad news. After about a year in a heavy traffic path, the scallops around the corners started to come loose.  I learned this is the kind of run that is best used in a room where people and animals won’t be walking over the corners throughout the day.  I probably should’ve noticed the wear and rotated the run to extend its life, but it was becoming a bit of a tripping hazard.  The fortunate thing about jute rugs, though, is they are inexpensive, so I don’t have anxiety about them wearing out.  Most of my jute rugs have lasted for several years and the ones I had the longest (about 8 years) I sold with our last house and imagine they are still in

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August 27, 2024 22 Comments
All Things Home

avoiding decorating mistakes

A couple of unfortunate things have happened to my blog over the years moving servers, changing platforms, getting a new camera, and a few mysteries that have caused some glitches in thousands of old blog posts.  Certain links from posts have disappeared (along with the words that were linked), some internal links have a superfluous date in the URL that makes the links lead to nowhere, and some pictures in 2016 were replaced with photos from 2018 that happened to have the same name.  All of that to say, I’m working through a few old posts each day to fix this issue and, while the work is tedious, it’s been nostalgic looking through some of the posts from 8-10 years ago.  As I’m getting ready to do more painting projects in our current house and thinking through decorating decisions, this post particularly caught my eye.  It was a Dear Reader

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August 26, 2024 9 Comments

I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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